InfoWorld's Neil McAllister offers 10 reasons why the PC is here to stay despite Steve Jobs' recent pronouncement that the iPad signals the end of the PC era. 'Depending on whom you ask, the iPad will save journalism, rescue the book publishing business, transform the movie industry, change the way we communicate, and make the perfect omelet. But there are plenty of reasons to suspect that at least some of these predictions will prove overly optimistic. Even more dubious is the idea that the iPad signals a true sea change in computing,' McAllister writes. Chief among the reasons the PC is not dead yet are desktops' comparative cost-effectiveness, the lack of versatility of mobile devices, the fact that desktop and mobile OSes don't mix, and limitations inherent to tablet devices' dependencies on the cloud.

The reality is that most of Apple's appeal originates in its easy-to-use software stack, however the software landscape is changing really quickly. Ever since I got a new htc desire with android 2.1 with the sense ui, I believe android really is on-par with the latest iOS 4 in terms of features and quality, and even far surpasses it in many respects (not having to care about managing an app's lifecycle at all, true multitasking, software freedom, etc.).

The hardware side of the story is also taken care of. We have mature high-performance ARM CPUs, cheap RAM, great displays and companies capable of manufacturing all this into quality designs (quanta, asus, etc.).

If HTC, or some other sensible manufacturer, came out with a 7-9'' tabled device with decent hardware specs running android, I'd get one immediately. Let's hope that 2010/2011 will be the year of Linux on the tabled. :-)